October 9 movie: The Guns of Navarone. Another great war movie. It's really interesting to compare this movie, made in the 60s, with movies like 30 Seconds Over Tokyo that were made during the war. The wartime movies are generally pretty straightforward. The GIs are heroes, the war wives are brave and supportive, the enemy are evil. It makes sense, since the movies had to inspire the homefront and lift people's spirits.
Ambiguity creeps into later movies like The Guns of Navarone. The Allied soldiers have conflicting motivations and are sometimes just wrong; and some of the Nazis are just soldiers, on the other side but not monsters. There's also a cold war sensibility: instead of talking about how they will end war forever and make the world safe for their children, the characters in Navarone wonder why peace is so much more complicated than war. Anyway, it's a great movie.
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